Mission Need

Every wildfire season brings new challenges and opportunities to protect communities and natural resources. In 2025, more than five million acres burned across the United States, a reminder of the scale and urgency of the fire mission. Meeting that mission depends on a network of dispatch systems, weather and fuel models and operational tools that firefighters, dispatchers and planners at federal, state, local and tribal agencies use every day.

To be effective, these systems must be available whenever and wherever they are needed. When they are, crews can coordinate resources in real time, forecast fire behavior and deliver critical updates that help safeguard lives, homes and public lands.

The Department of the Interior (DOI), like many agencies, saw the need for a reliable, secure way to host and support these applications across DOI and the interagency fire community. The department sought a platform and a partner that could unite multiple agencies, scale with demand and deliver consistent performance under any condition.

Solution

To meet this challenge, DOI partnered with SAIC to create a secure, scalable platform with an active Authority to Operate (ATO), ensuring mission-critical systems remain available to firefighters. The platform hosts and supports essential wildfire applications used across federal, state, local and tribal agencies. Designed for resiliency and supported by a dedicated SAIC team, it enables agencies to coordinate seamlessly, adapt quickly to shifting conditions and maintain operational continuity both in and out of active fire season.

Over the past 11 years, the DOI Wildland Fire community, in partnership with SAIC, has:

• Migrated from a small, single application cloud environment to a shared platform that now supports 15 major wildfire tools in the AWS Commercial Cloud
• Provided real-time support to firefighting missions, including during COVID-19, when more than 100 virtual servers were spun up within days to support dispatchers’ mission-critical work to be performed remotely
• Worked closely with application owners to modernize and optimize fire community applications
• Identified cost savings by using cloud-native services more efficiently and regularly reviewing opportunities to right-size infrastructure

Mission Impact

Firefighters, fuel analysts, dispatchers and weather forecasters rely on this platform’s stability and scalability to make valuable, informed decisions during fast-moving wildfire events where every second counts. Federal, state, local and tribal teams use these tools to coordinate crews, model fire behavior, monitor weather and prioritize evacuations. Reliable access ensures decisions are made without delay, protecting lives, property and critical natural resources.

The platform also supports broader federal priorities. Applications that track wildfire spending enable agencies to manage and report on funding tied to firefighter pay increases authorized in the 2025 appropriations bill, H.R. 1968. Other applications advance land and fuels management goals outlined in the March 2025 executive order focused on reducing fire risk and increasing domestic timber production.

Built to adapt, the platform continues to evolve alongside multi-agency priorities, modernizing applications, strengthening security and scaling to support emerging requirements.

Explore how SAIC supports federal civilian, state and local agencies with scalable, secure solutions that drive innovation, enhance mission integration and strengthen services for citizens nationwide.